Sunday Bird’s Eye View Schedule for 3/11

SAT 3/10 (1:00PM) — Couple quick notes: OAK-AM #1 Throwing Up Bricks and #2 Grim Reapers have byes that are not listed. It’s a 6 team playoffs. Secondly, BHPY parking lot is closed, so please arrive early for street parking… FRI 3/9 (8:15AM) — Schedule is set, overlaps avoided, bye and doubleheader lists updated, although I’m still trying to figure out why these lists don’t add up to the total number of teams — so email me if your team is lost in the shuffle. Also, I’ll need to add playoff bracket pages so you can see how the tiebreakers were determined for the seedings.

Use the jump link below to hit the schedule for Sun 3/11. I’ve moved the scheduling posts to the “previous” section. Also, feel free to read this week’s bonus material below the jump link.

THU 3/8 (12:30PM) — Hot off the presses: My personal story with Jeremy Lin, which I have been aching to tell for a long, long time, and some of which is touched upon at the bottom of my previous write-up on this page which was really about Dream Leaguer Ross Nakamura…

The roadmaps will show which divisions are heading into the playoffs. At this point, instead of me constantly linking to the roadmap, it’s probably easier for all of us if people just use the searchbox in the upper righthand side of any page on this website. Just type in “roadmap” and you should be able to find the post.

Further complicating this process is the fact that some teams are in the wrong division. As I discussed in last week’s Sandbagging Diatribe and Solution, for whatever reason ranging from malicious to innocent, there are teams that are sort of, how shall I say, BLATANTLY in the wrong division to the point where roster movement could be considered not at a level playing field.

Now before we get into that, let me preface by saying that I am perfectly happy to be the asshole. So if you’re mad that I moved your team, be mad at me. After all, you don’t really know how I came to the decision. It could be the result of my psychotic rampage towards fairness/parity — understandable, however (I hope), when you consider all the divisions that we have (not like yall don’t have options). It could be that someone ratted you out. You just don’t know. So just focus your hatred on me, the Commish. That’s one of my jobs. Eat your heart out, Stern.

It’s not different than a few weeks ago when I personally witnessed sandbagging happening at its most blatant level. I disqualified two players on the spot from playing in a division I felt was way too low for them. One of them was playing under a different name. To the captain’s credit, he had no clue about our rules. The craziest thing about it is, one of these players played for one of my many traveling tournament teams in the past, while the other I’ve picked up on one of my own higher division teams in the past, too. Not surprisingly, one of these players was livid at me and I could hear them talking about the situation on the bench. Here we have an example of where being Commish sucks. Well, I’ll tell you what, I don’t care what you think about me. I’m happy to be known as an asshole. But there are certain things about Dream League that I will not allow happen like I’ve seen in a billion other leagues growing up, just like you the player and as a captain feeling like it wasn’t necessary for another captain to bring a stacked team in a division that was supposed to be for fun. This is my league and I want it to be better than the ones that came before it. Even if that means that teams that I believe sandbag no longer want to play and so I lose their future revenue. There’s just some things I can’t allow. Sue me, I’m a proud asshole.

So here are the teams I had issue with:

REC-O+ Pure Supremacy (6-0) — The whole roster is just too stacked for REC. I don’t need to list all 7-8 players here. I mean, this is simply a violation of the no-more-than-3-players-from-a-higher-division-rule. And no, I’m not going to nitpick that rule to death. If you’re looking for loopholes to a rule, then you are not getting it. Pure Supremacy will be in 6FT-OSF.

REC-O+ Kurruption REC (5-1) — They have the same roster as their Kurruption AAA except without the two bigs. They beat a good team (Hearbreak Kids) by 20. Pickup Greg Hom is once again tearing up the REC with 33 points after scoring 47 the previous week. I mean, this is REC, guys. People who have the ability to score over 25 shouldn’t be messing around here. I’ll be moving them to 6FT-OSF for playoffs. I suspect that this team is a response to Pure Supremacy. You see what happens? I need to nuke this.

A/R-OAK Dream (6-0) — As with any witch hunt, obviously I had to look at why the Dream franchise was once again sitting atop yet another division. But after careful consideration, I have concluded once again that this team is overachieving with teamwork and doesn’t necessarily have talent that can’t be overcome. And I definitely don’t see this as a AAA team, yet. Now, I’d strongly recommend that they try 6FT next season, but I don’t know if there are reasons why they can’t go there. Also please be reminded that this franchise has put in a lot of teams in Dream League in the past, probably the most in the history of the league to tell you the truth, and they have had teams that have struggled before, so it’s not like they haven’t paid their dues at some point. Again, people are going to claim that I’m playing favorites with Freddie’s team, but it is what it is. I don’t see Dream as a team that picks up talented players from a higher division. It’s as simple as that.

A/R-OAK Colossal (5-1) — On the other hand, Colossal, even with a worse record than Dream, is in clear violation of having players from a higher division. Henry Wong, Kevin Ho, and Alex Stempel could all easily play in the AL/NL. The role players aren’t REC, either. Tuan Mai and Nic Vu have had extensive experience in the AAA. That’s a pretty solid AAA starting five right there. Add any serviceable 6’3″ or 6’4″ player and you’d have an AL/NL team. So I’ll be moving these guys up to AAA-OAK playoffs.

A/R-SF Who’s Next (3-2) — The losses are only when the big guns are not there, and not surprisingly the guns sometimes miss the game because they are called for duty on Colossal. I came real, real close to just moving up this whole team the AAA and they’ve promised to play AAA next season, but what I’m going to do mostly out of scheduling convenience (two of their players play on another AAA team), is not allow bigs Kevin Ho and Dave Chen to be on the floor at the same time. If they are, you must tell the ref immediately to stop the game and call me. If it came to that point, I’d be really tempted to just forfeit Who’s Next. I don’t want to hear another excuse claiming no knowledge.

REC-SF Boogie Down Eagles (4-2) — Center Joe Santos in the REC is not going to be allowed in REC after this season. First off, the height can be debated. He’s 6’3″ via eye test, while we recommend 6’2″ as the tallest in REC. Also, Jason Bendebel at guard is a little overkill. Both losses came with Santos absent. I might consider this team a fringe REC team with either Santos or Bendebel not on the team, but when they’re both on the floor, we have at least a lower-level AAA-REC team. However, I’m not going to move this team up because there are other problems in REC-SF. The best REC-SF teams (e.g., Frisco Hawks, Kuyabraddaz) all have centers that can at least give Santos a little resistance, although Santos is still bigger. We’re splitting up REC-SF and you can almost see the delineation is made at whether you have a serviceable center or not.

REC-SF Lay Up City (4-2) — When I look at this team, I see a well-rounded team that should be playing at least in the lower-level of A/R-SF. They have a decent pg, a shooter, a very talented small forward who is basically the main cog in the machine, and rebounding 4s and 5s who can put back misses. Fact is, I really like this team and I’m probably a little bit swayed by the nice GSW-like unis they just bought, but deep down this is not a team that should be playing in what we call REC. Yet, oh, twice out of every six games, this team will come out flat. In any case, the upper echelon of REC-SF is pretty even, so I’m not moving this team. Since I’m calling out all these teams, I might as well mention the Heat (6-0) as perhaps the least dominant undefeated team I’ve ever seen and Run N Gun (4-2) is its namesake: relatively speaking a very athletic team for REC but uncontrolled chaos. So anyways I thought I’d mention these REC-SF teams but I’m not changing anything there. Come to think of it, if I combined the lower level of A/R-SF with the upper level of REC-SF, we’d have a helluva division. But that’s more work, so forget it.

If I missed any others (which I’m sure I did), I’ll be sure to list them here later.

To me, intentional or accidental sandbagging has become like what the Asian-American ethnicity issue was for us years ago before we opened up Dream League to every legal adult under the sun. The ethnicity issue had started becoming a regular occurrence, so we adjusted and dealt with it. Teams in the wrong division will now be just an accepted problem that is routinely corrected in the playoffs. In essence, not a problem anymore. We’ll have to scrutinize rosters during signups a little more, but that’s not too difficult to implement. Granted, we’ll have teams that will rightfully complain as we put them into a tougher playoffs, but THAT will become the one-off problem to deal with rather than a growing epidemic spiraling out of control.

There’s also teams that may be in too strong of a division. However, I think we’ve solved most, if not all, these issues by splitting up divisions into separate Upper and Lower playoffs. One team that comes to mind is A/R-SF ZNGA. I’ve perused their schedule results for this season and noticed that the worst team they’ve played is Full Tilt, which is probably going to finish at 3-3 considering Full Tilt is playing my team next and my team is depleted this season (and tanking for a lottery pick haha!). That leaves out a bunch of cellar-dweller A/R-SF teams that ZNGA hasn’t played. And it’s easier to just keep them in this division, otherwise I’d have to snuff out one regular season game so that they can start the playoffs with the other REC-SF teams. So, ZNGA will remain in A/R-SF and be in the Lower A/R-SF playoffs.

Hats off to Vinny, unfortunate expulsion of Tone Team

This past Sunday, our esteemed ref Vinny Myers probably saved two lives. In the afternoon, while running back on defense, the REC-O+ Dragon’s Luca Peng collapsed and had a seizure. Vinny helped him lie on his side to avoid choking while awaiting the ambulance, which took 45 minutes to arrive.

Sorry to go on a tangent, but there’s America’s health system at its best. Forty-five minutes. Really makes you wonder. Once in the affluent part of Potrero SF, I needed an ambulance and one from the SFFD was there in minutes. There was probably another one right behind it. Final bill was a couple grand, btw. All of a sudden my mind is picturing an SNL skit where the ambulance drivers get the call, look at each other, and say, “Bushrod? Man, I wanna get paid! Let’s see if there’s something else that comes up.” Not sure what I want to say about this except the wonderful bumper sticker I once saw: AMERICA’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: DON’T GET SICK!

Peng checked out of the hospital the next day and is, at last report, doing okay.

Later that night, there was an unknown man of African-American descent who was spending a few hours watching games from the stands. There was some speculation that he might’ve been eyeing an opportunity to commit theft, but we don’t really know. It’s been reported to me that there may have been some kind of verbal altercation with Tone Team’s spectators.

With an hour left at the gym, Vinny decided he needed to charge his phone, so when he got to the parking lot, he noticed this unidentified man getting beat up by 4-5 unidentified spectators from the Tone Team game. A few teeth were knocked out. Vinny yelled to cut that out, and the unidentified spectators fled the scene. The unidentified man later returned to the gym with other people.

It became clear that there could be an attempt at retaliation. So, for everyone’s safety, we have removed both of Tone Team’s teams from the league.

OK, I just spent like an hour — yes, sometimes what takes you a few minutes to read took me an hour to write — reporting to you stuff that should have never happened in the first place (granted, the player collapsing was not anyone’s fault). Time to go do the actual schedule.

Ryan Nakamura: the Next…? Haha, don’t say it

I thought I would also say a few words about the AL/NL Rangers’ Ross Nakamura. Last week, he had some vintage stuff. This is stuff I hadn’t seen since the legendary Asian league stalwarts like the Associates (later known as Setai-Cossa, which is Associates spelled backwards because they started to get lazy and not man the bingo nights with the real Associates organization!). The Associates used to pull wins out of their hats. Escape with wins like David Copperfield does shark tanks. Well, the Rangers are doing that these days. And guess who was behind the latest one?

Down six with under two minutes, Ross made not one but two rips on defense and scored not one but two swishes from trey-land to send the game against the up-and-coming-and-not-to-be-underestimated Cobras into overtime. All game long, he was contending with all-city 6’5″ Isaiah Sandoval, who’s one of those players good enough to always be invited to play in the Summer Kezar Pro-Am. Then, Ross started OT with a trey, which Sandoval matched, then the Rangers’ other long-range bomber Taylor Takahashi sealed it with a trey of his own.

After the game, I had a rare meal with Mike Hicks, Rangers captain, whose team I have coached in various Asian tournaments since 2009-10. Now I’m sort of assistant coach to them and dabble here and there where I can, if I’m not busy scorekeeping. I almost feel bad for saying this, but I had forgotten had good Ross has become. To the point where Hicks said, “He’s the best player in Dream League, right?” I’m like, damn, no sh_t!

So right now I am hooking up Ross with my network and he’ll probably be showcasing his talents at the LA Showcase tourney (Apr 28-29, 2012, details to be posted shortly — we’ll have many divisions and you should come and play and watch Ross too!) in front of real pro agent. As some of you know, I first “officially” declared (as in, blogged about it) Jeremy Lin a bonafide NBA first-round draft pick five months after I invited Jeremy to a pickup game held by Blake Griffin‘s former trainer, Frank Matrisciano, and when “JL4” (my nickname for him at the time), drove hard right past Brady Morningstar and bounced a pass between the legs of a helping Patrick Patterson to ex-Stanford star Taj Finger right under the basket (Finger actually missed the layup lol).

It takes moments like those to sometimes see the light.

I’m confident Ross will get a pro contract somewhere. Why? Because I’ve seen guys like Anthony Goods and A-Goods plays in the NBDL. I’d love to see Ross vs A-Goods head-to-head. Not saying Goods wouldn’t get the best of Ross, but at least I’m putting them in the same sentence. Then there’s guys like NACBAIT veteran Austin Yuen who has played in Japan’s BJ League. There’s also Remington Chun, who has played in BJL as well as the Asean League in Indonesia, plus the Philippines (PBL, I think). Well, let me put it quite simply: Ross > Austin or Remy.

Anyways, I thought I’d mention this because of all the other things that happened this past week. And if it weren’t for me hanging out at Orlando All-Star Weekend a couple weekends back with Bay Area NBA agent Ara Vartanian and one of his clients Daniel Orton (who was at the J.Lin scrimmage), as well as the well-connected Chris Schlatter, I probably wouldn’t know where to go to help Ross most effectively. And, yeah, I’m fully aware this puts Ross out there and guys SHOULD be gunning for him here in Dream League. He needs to start playing with a bulls-eye on his back anyways. Go ahead, bring your best. It will only make him a better player and he’ll need that now that he is a bonafide pro prospect for somewhere.

Remember, you’re talking to the guy who first noticed something in Jeremy Lin. You should’ve seen the text from J.Lin’s high school coach Peter Diepenbrock when I told him in the summer of ’09 that I felt Jeremy was a bonafide first round pick. It went something like: “What?! Really? Wow.” He was probably thinking, “Who the hell is this guy Rich?”

Btw, Ross (24) is too old to make it to the NBA (and probably not mean enough yet and just a tad not quick enough, actually, sorry), but who knows. You train hard to improve your body like JL did, maybe get a look at Vegas Summer League (I’ve seen worse guys like Nate Funk make a roster and play A LOT, for the Warriors Summer League team no less — figures, huh?), maybe make the NBDL, anything can happen. But BJL is definitely a real possibility.

Back to the Schedule for Sun 3/11

Here are the probable matchups for 3/11. Note, I haven’t had time to fill in the actual team names for the REC-SF Upper and Lower playoffs. We’ll have one extra game than usual at BHPY, and one of the two gym directors there has confirmed that’s okay (so we’ll see)…

Previous scheduling-related posts

THU 3/8 (11:00PM) — The schedule below is pretty much set to go in chronological order, with one small change since the last post 15 minutes ago (ISAH/BHPY gym opening time). I’ll wait til the morning 8am Fri to post the tipoffs, but here are the start times: ISAH early morning, BHPY mid-morning, BCRC early morning, WKRC mid-morning, PHHS mid-afternoon… (10:45PM) — Looks like I have no choice but to go ahead and postpone those three REC-SF+ games listed below. I’m gonna go ahead and schedule the #5 vs #4 game in that division because, well, we can do it in both teams’ timeframes, so let’s get it done before any possible gym snafus. That means both #5 and #4 will likely have a bye on 3/18 as they await the winner of the lower-seeded games to play the high seeds #1 thru #3 on 3/18.

THU 3/8 (2:45PM) — Well now some REC-SF teams are saying they can play anytime, so we’ll see… (2:30PM) — OAK and SJ are done, but SF isn’t. Still can’t post tipoffs yet. Scheduling the high seeds in REC-SF Upper is turning out to be a chore. So many teams with opposite timeframes, but for basketball reasons it’s best we keep this group of 11 teams because it’s gonna be high parity/competition. I might just postpone these games…

upper-p1b: Winner-#9/#8 at #1 Heat
upper-p1b: Winner-#10/#7 at #2 SFFD
upper-p1b: Winner-#11/#6 at #3 All Show No Go

Not sure yet. The grid below doesn’t have these on it.

So anyways, I woke up at 4am, worked til 8am, did some errands, and now working with Freddie on finishing the schedule. I still think 10pm or 11pm tonight publishing the tipoffs is a safe bet. So you’ll just have to wait, sorry. For example, one of the #1 seeds in SJ asked if they had a bye and I don’t really wanna commit to saying yes yet (there’s 7 teams in that bracket), so please just wait til things get published, but definitely let me know if you think I missed something. Enjoy the reads in the meantime…

THU 3/8 (8:00AM) — Due to the difficulties of scheduling playoffs, I’m going to officially move the post date of Sun 3/11 to tonight at probably 10pm or 11pm. If you read this entire post, you’ll see that we’re dealing with a lot of issues this week, from playoff seeding to curbing sandbagging to dealing with potentially escalating violence.

Freddie and I are currently working on the schedule for this Sun 3/11. It’s been a lot of work because many of the divisions, esp in OAK and SJ, will be embarking on playoffs, and finding out tiebreakers and seeding teams is, quite frankly, a bitch.